Kooser’s Column 179 - ‘Bushwick: Latex Flat’
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Posted by Linda Sue Grimes Aug 30, 2008 |
Kooser’s American Life in Poetry
While serving as the U. S. Poet Laureate 2004 to 2006, Nebraska poet Ted Kooser launched his series of weekly columns called American Life in Poetry. These columns are offered free to newspapers to dramatize the value and just plain fun of poetry and to demonstrate how poetry enhances life in America.
Kooser’s Commentary
Kooser introduces the poem: “I've always loved shop talk, with its wonderful language of tools and techniques. This poem by D. Nurkse of Brooklyn, New York, is a perfect example. I especially like the use of the verb, lap, in line seven, because that's exactly the sound a four-inch wall brush makes.”
The Poem
The first four lines:
Sadness of just-painted rooms.
We clean our tools
meticulously, as if currying horses:
the little nervous sash brush
to be combed and primped
To read the rest of this verse, Column 179 .
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